Two years in the French West Indies. Partie 2

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cious phantom of the island will not go,—softly haunting us through the splendid haze. And always the tropic wind blows soft and warm ;—there is an indescribable caress in it ! Perhaps some such breeze, blowing from Indian waters, might have inspired that prophecy of Islam concerning the Wind of the Last Day,—that ''Yellow Wind, softer than silk, balmier than musk,"—which is to sweep the spirits of the just to God in the great Winnowing of Souls.. . . Then into the indigo night vanishes forever from my eyes the ghost of Pelée ; and the moon swings up,—a young and lazy moon, drowsing upon her back, as in a hammock. . . . Yet a few nights more, and we shall see this slim young moon erect, — gliding upright on her way,—coldly beautiful like a fair Northern girl. VIII.

A N D ever through tepid nights and azure days the Guadeloupe rushes on,—her wake a river of snow beneath the sun, a torrent of fire beneath the stars,— steaming straight for the North. Under the peaking of Montserrat we steam,—beautiful Montserrat, all softly wrinkled like a robe of greenest velvet fallen from the waist !—breaking the pretty sleep of Plymouth town behind its screen of palms . . . young palms, slender and full of grace as Creole children are ;— And by tall Nevis, with her trinity of dead craters purpling through ocean-haze ;—by clouded St. Christopher's mountain - giant ;—past ghostly St. Martin's, farfloating in fog of gold, like some dream of the Saint's own Second Summer ;— Past low Antigua's vast blue harbor,—shark-haunted, bounded about by huddling of little hills, blue and green ;—


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